How much do Nato members spend on defence?

Nato leaders are meeting for the Munich Security Conference at a tense time for the security alliance.

It is the first major summit since President Donald Trump threatened to take control of Greenland, a semi-autonomous territory of Denmark - a fellow Nato member.

Nato is a military alliance of 32 countries including the US, Canada and European nations.

It has significant deployments along its eastern flank, designed to deter Russia following the invasion of Ukraine.

Trump has repeatedly insisted that members of the military alliance, including European countries, must spend more on defence, and there are signs that has been successful.

The previous target for Nato members on defence spending was to spend 2% of the size of their economy (measured by GDP) by 2024.

According to Nato estimates for 2025, every country in the alliance achieved at least 2% last year.

Even Spain, which has been criticised repeatedly by Trump over its defence spending, managed 2%.

Members are now committed to spending 3.5% on defence by 2035, with another 1.5% going on things like protecting critical infrastructure and ensuring civil preparedness.

Only three countries: Poland, Lithuania and Latvia, spent more than 3.5% on defence in 2025, although Estonia and Norway were close.

In cash terms however, the US is still by far the biggest spender on defence, spending about $980bn (£720bn) last year, which was 62% of the Nato total.

The US is a global superpower, with military commitments around the world, not just to Nato. It had GDP greater than all the rest of the members of Nato put together in 2025.

US defence spending has come down from 3.6% of GDP in 2020 to an estimated 3.2% in 2025.

Defence spending by the rest of Nato - Canada and the European members - has gone up from 1.7% of combined GDP in 2020 to an estimated 2.3% in 2025.

Nato's annual budget and programmes are expected to cost about €5.3bn (£4.6bn) in 2026 and there's an agreed cost-sharing formula to pay for the running of things such as:

• civilian staff and administrative costs of Nato headquarters
• joint operations, strategic commands, radar and early warning systems, training and liaison
• defence communications systems, airfields, harbours and fuel supplies

The four biggest contributors to this are the US and Germany at 15% and the UK and France at 10%.

The US used to pay more than 22% of these running costs.

But a new payment formula was agreed in 2019 to address complaints by the first Trump administration about the burden to the US of supporting the alliance.

Nato leaders agreed in 2022 to increases in the use of common funding, with the total due to go up each year until 2030.

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